The present invention relates to an equipment management system and method, a monitoring apparatus, a database apparatus, a database client apparatus, and a recording medium. More specifically, the present invention relates to an equipment management system which monitors and records the operations of service water and sewage water supply/distribution facilities, industrial production facilities and sales data collecting facilities and which displays and records failures and abnormal conditions of these facilities and displays when it is necessary to maintain the facilities being monitored.
Conventional monitoring apparatus have only functions of displaying the operational conditions of equipment being monitored and recording operation data. Hence, although among the operation data there are useful data for the maintenance of equipment, it is difficult to take advantage of these data for the maintenance purpose.
Let us take the maintenance of a water supply pump as an example. If the operation time after the pump has been started exceeds a maintenance period, it may be decided that consumable parts need to be replaced. Although the pump operation time is among the data contained in the monitoring apparatus, maintenance period data (indicating, for example, that the pump needs overhauling every five years) is not entered in the monitoring apparatus. Hence, it is difficult to use the operation time in determining the maintenance timing.
After the maintenance has been executed, the pump is restarted and its operation time is counted for the next maintenance period with the maintenance execution date taken as a reference. The conventional monitoring apparatus, however, have no means to enter the maintenance execution date.
It has therefore been proposed that maintenance is managed by entering reference values such as a maintenance and inspection execution date (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Nos. 4-340325, 11-239390, 10-190592 and 4-23189). These proposed techniques, however, do not consider accessing various data in a database apparatus from a plurality of devices.
The present invention is intended to solve the conventional problems and provide an equipment management system which allows the monitor data accumulated in the monitoring apparatus to be used by a plurality of apparatus; which has a function of adding maintenance reference values as data, checking whether the maintenance is necessary and displaying when the maintenance is necessary; and which has a means for entering the date that the maintenance work was executed. The invention also provides an equipment management method, a monitoring apparatus, a database apparatus, a database client apparatus, and a recording medium.
According to one aspect, the invention provides an equipment management system comprising: a monitoring apparatus to monitor equipment of a facility being monitored and retrieve operation data; a database apparatus in which the operation data retrieved by the monitoring apparatus is recorded; and a database client apparatus to send and receive information to and from the database apparatus via a network, display the data recorded in the database apparatus, and enter data; wherein the database apparatus records maintenance reference values for the equipment of the facility being monitored and the monitoring apparatus or database client apparatus outputs a display or printout prompting an execution of maintenance work when the operation data is in excess of or close to the maintenance reference values.
According to another aspect, the invention provides an equipment management system, wherein, after the equipment of the facility being monitored is serviced, an equipment operation start date is entered from the database client apparatus, a check is made based on the equipment operation start date as to whether a maintenance period is exceeded or will soon be exceeded, and a display or printout prompting an execution of maintenance work is output to the monitoring apparatus or database client apparatus.
According to still another aspect, the invention provides a monitoring apparatus for monitoring equipment of a facility being monitored and retrieving operation data, the monitoring apparatus forming an equipment management system along with: a database apparatus in which the operation data retrieved by the monitoring apparatus is recorded; and a database client apparatus to send and receive information to and from the database apparatus via a network, display the data recorded in the database apparatus, and enter data; wherein when the retrieved operation data is in excess of or close to maintenance reference values for the equipment of the facility being monitored which are recorded in the database apparatus, the monitoring apparatus outputs a display or printout prompting an execution of maintenance work.
According to a further aspect, the invention provides a database apparatus in which operation data retrieved by a monitoring apparatus is recorded, the database apparatus forming an equipment management system along with: a monitoring apparatus to monitor equipment of a facility being monitored and retrieve the operation data; and a database client apparatus to send and receive information to and from the database apparatus via a network, display the data recorded in the database apparatus, and enter data; wherein the database apparatus records maintenance reference values for the equipment of the facility being monitored.
According to a further aspect, the invention provides a database client apparatus for sending and receiving information to and from a database apparatus via a network, displaying the data recorded in the database apparatus, and entering data, the database client apparatus forming an equipment management system along with: a monitoring apparatus to monitor equipment of a facility being monitored and retrieve operation data; and a database apparatus in which the operation data retrieved by the monitoring apparatus is recorded; wherein when the retrieved operation data is in excess of or close to maintenance reference values for the equipment of the facility being monitored which are recorded in the database apparatus, the database client apparatus outputs a display or printout prompting an execution of maintenance work.
According to a further aspect, the invention provides a recording medium used in an equipment management system, the equipment management system comprising: a monitoring apparatus to monitor equipment of a facility being monitored and retrieve operation data; a database apparatus in which the operation data retrieved by the monitoring apparatus is recorded; and a database client apparatus to send and receive information to and from the database apparatus via a network, display the data recorded in the database apparatus, and enter data; wherein the recording medium records a program which realizes in a computer a function of recording maintenance reference values for the equipment of the facility being monitored or a function of outputting a display or printout prompting an execution of maintenance work when the operation data is in excess of or close to the maintenance reference values.
According to a further aspect, the invention provides an equipment management method comprising the steps of: monitoring equipment of a facility being monitored; receiving operation data from the equipment via a network; comparing the operation data with maintenance reference values for the equipment of the facility being monitored, the maintenance reference values being recorded in the database apparatus or database client apparatus; and outputting a display or printout prompting an execution of maintenance work when the operation data is in excess of or close to the maintenance reference values.